Two by Two

For the next 5 years, the Central Advisory Service on Intellectual Property (CAS-IP) will, through its National Partners Initiative, help Centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and their national partners to build on knowledge and expertise in handling intellectual property and technology transfer. This support comes thanks to a new grant from the Cultural Co-operation, Education and Research Department of the Directorate General for International Cooperation (DGIS) of the Netherlands .

Participants in this initiative are organized into pairs consisting of a CGIAR IP focal point and an IP colleague nominated from a national partner institution. At the first meeting, which was held in May 2007, the group listed stakeholders who are entrusted with intellectual assets and IP, including farmers, researchers, trainers, scientists, government agencies and students. The IP in question ranges from plant varieties and licensed technologies to patents and diagnostic kits. The challenge is to ensure this property is effectively managed when in the custody of the various users.

Hanumanth Rao, IP Manager at ICRISAT working with Kalpana Sastry from the National Academy of Agricultural Research in Hyderabad, India with the help of Jim Jimenez from IRRI.

The response at the preliminary meeting of this group was extremely positive. Each of the pairs committed to a 12-month action plan to tackle some of the more urgent IP issues faced at the national level or in a partnership. The International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, for example, committed to working with their respective national partners (the National Academy of Research and Management in India and the National Biotechnology Development Agency in Nigeria) to review their IP policies. The national partner of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, committed to populating the license agreement database that was made available by ICRISAT during the meeting. The Forestry Research and Development Agency in Indonesia, in conjunction with the Center for International Forestry Research, aims to run a workshop on collaborative research. These are all concrete steps toward improving IP management at the national level.

The initiative is planned as a two-way street. Capacity and expertise in managing IP and technology transfer are best acquired through a combination of training, experience and communication with other professionals. The partnerships, which CAS-IP initiated and has pledged to support on an ongoing basis, promise a real opportunity to leverage CGIAR Center national resources to better manage both CGIAR and local intellectual assets at the local level in a global context.

The initiative is currently planned as part of a larger 5-year project funded by DGIS. By Year 3, CAS-IP intends to transform the initiative into a standalone IP professional society, or coordinate it with an existing international IP practice group, to create an organization with international reach.

IP management should be about ensuring, at each juncture, that research outputs are accessible for use to benefit those who need them most - resource poor farmers. The CAS-IP National Partners Initiative is an important step toward achieving that goal.

The National Partners Initiative was launched under CAS-IP leadership in May 2007 with a meeting at Bioversity International headquarters in Rome. There are currently 12 pairs of IP managers/focal points and their nominated national partners from Burkina Faso, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Peru, Philippines, Tanzania and Thailand.

CAS-IP aims to enable access to, and the use of, CGIAR products for the benefit of the poor through effective IP and technology transfer management.

For more information on CAS-IP activities, and for information on the services available to participating CGIAR Centers, please e-mail v.henson-apollonio@cgiar.org.